NVIDIA is to replace RTX 3060 SKUs with dedicated and limited mining GPU. The replacement GPU shipped to board partners is the GA106-302.
A while ago, NVIDIA started adding ETH mining restrictions to the GeForce RTX 3060. It is said to be impenetrable and unbreakable. However, no one suspected (including NVIDIA) that they accidentally released a driver for the CUDA / SWL version, 470.05 Beta driver, with no restrictions for ETH mining. NVIDIA will be relaunched with a new version of the GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card, again suppressing ETH mining behavior.
According to the Taiwanese graphics card manufacturer, NVIDIA has discontinued the old version of the GeForce RTX 3060 with the GA106-300 GPU chip and replaced it with a new GA106-302 GPU chip. Since the NVIDIA driver for CUDA on SWL version 470.05 Beta driver has no GA106-302 data, the old driver is completely invalid. At the same time, NVIDIA has also added more mechanisms to the GA106-302 GPU to ensure that the new batch of GeForce RTX 3060 can stop ETH mining. NVIDIA pointed out that the GeForce RTX 3060’s processing power limit is based on the GPU, driver and VBIOS handshake. When it detects that the user is performing the hash operation, the GPU operation is forced to slow down by 50%, absorbing the lesson from the previous time. The industry said that the current GeForce RTX 3060 on the market is still the old GA106-300 GPU chip, and the GA106-302 GPU is expected to ship in May. After mixing in the market, end users will not be able to tell if the purchased RTX 3060 is a new or an old version until they have bought one.
We wouldn’t be surprised if NVIDIA does this with the entire RTX 3000 product line.
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